


Mimshisema

by catie_writes_things



Series: Motherhood AU [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Backstory, Childhood, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catie_writes_things/pseuds/catie_writes_things
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<em>Ma ishmat, batta?</em>" What's your name, girl?</p><p>Shmi Skywalker origin story. Prologue to an AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mimshisema

It starts with the birth of a little girl.

Unheralded and unremarked, she slips into the world. She will be abandoned shortly after, will pass between the care of strangers for her first three years, people with enough compassion not to let a child starve to death, and no more. If one of them gives her a name, she will not remember it.

She is not wanted, and yet here she is. Her birth is her first act of defiance.

-

The streets of Mos Espa are her mother, and she has no shortage of siblings.

Orphans, bastards, and foundlings of every species roam throughout the dusty spaceport. Some of the older ones will look after the younger, but there are no guardians here. They pick pockets, swipe fruit from inattentive vendors, and occasionally do odd jobs for a few meager but honestly earned coins. They live their lives out of doors, beneath the merciless twin suns by day and the cold, distant stars by night.

They have one master: hunger. They have one nursemaid: their own quick fingers. They have an endless supply of disciplinarians, and harsh ones at that, should they be caught in their master’s service.

But other than that, they are free.

-

“ _Ma ishmat, batta?_ ” What’s your name, girl?

She first remembers hearing the question from an adolescent Twi’lek, when she is still too young to realize she doesn’t know the answer.

“ _Shmi…shmi…_ ” Her halting response ends in uncertain silence, and the Twi’lek boy laughs.

“ _Ishmat Shmi?_ ” he taunts, taking her nervous repetition as her answer. Your name is Name?

She fails to find a better answer, and the cruel nickname sticks. Her first name is no name at all.

-

Later, she will acquire a second name.

Mos Espa’s sons and daughters learn early on to tread carefully, to make as little noise and occupy as little space as they can. A misstep could mean the difference between their next meal and a severe beating. Stealth is survival.

In this art, the nameless little girl soon excels them all.

If her slight frame gives her an advantage, none of her siblings are well-fed enough for it to be much of one. But the girl is incredibly light-footed. When she walks, no one can hear her coming. When she has occasion to run, her feet scarcely seem to touch the ground.

 _Mimshisema_ , her siblings call her. She walks on the air itself, could probably climb up past the twin suns and away from this dustball on her own bare feet, if she only got enough of a running start.

Skywalker.

-

Mos Espa has many children, but she also has many ways of getting rid of them, for she is as ambivalent a mother as any blood relation her sons and daughters have known.

Hunger will relieve a portion of her burden, for he is an unforgiving master, who punishes failure with death. The more zealous disciplinarians will contribute to his efforts, as will sickness, heatstroke, and sandstorms. A few wayward children will venture far enough outside the spaceport to fall prey to the Sand People or the Krayt dragons. 

All do a good service to Mos Espa, for however many of her children she divests herself of each year, their numbers are quickly replenished. The herd needs constant thinning, lest they overrun the city, and forces natural and otherwise are happy to oblige.

But the slavers handle most of the population control.

-

Mos Espa’s junk dealers will ask for a starting price of one hundred gold peggats for a hyperdrive engine in good condition, and will not sell it for less than eighty.

In the slave markets, an adult male human in good health goes for forty peggats, with an additional fee of one trugut if the seller has implanted his transmitter himself.

Three truguts will purchase an entire bottle of the most expensive liquor in any cantina, for the locals are not known for their sophisticated taste in drinks.

An adult female human sells for forty-five to fifty peggats, depending on her looks. Female Twi’leks start at sixty. Rodians, thirty-five.

Life is cheap, and slave dealing a hard way to make a profit. Unless you acquire your merchandise virtually for free.

Shmi Skywalker is abducted as soon as her body begins to show signs of womanhood. She is sold to Gardulla the Hutt for thirty-nine peggats, on account of how malnourished she is.

-

In Gardulla’s palace, they make her dance.

The graceful, dainty gait that kept her alive for years on the streets, that earned her first real name, is made to serve her new masters. She learns to twirl and sway in just the right way to be most alluring to whatever species she must entertain. For humans, emphasize the hips. For Twi’leks, move the arms languidly. For Devaronians, arch the back.

Light-footed as ever, she skips and pirouettes and contorts her body to the delight of Gardulla’s guests. She still walks on air, but now there are chains on her ankles. 

The chains are delicate and made for show, but they are very real.

-

They make her do more than dance, of course.

The dancers are quartered in the harem, when they are not being lent out to the guests.

Gardulla herself doesn’t like human girls. That’s the only saving grace.

-

 _Mimshisema_.

She could climb up past the twin suns and away from this dustball on her own bare feet, if she only got enough of a running start.

That had been her dream, before. Now, the tiny transmitter somewhere in her body would ensure that any such escape ended abruptly in painful death.

It is still her dream anyway. That is her second act of defiance.

-

Yet there are days she is returned to the harem dripping blood, days her insides burn hotter than the twin suns, days they make her dance with bruised ribs, smiling seductively when she wants to retch.

There are days when the dream of escape and the dream of death are indistinguishable.

When someone else owns your life, suicide is an act of defiance, too.

-

Three years after she is sold, she witnesses a fellow slave jump to her death from Gardulla’s private box at the podrace arena.

The Mirialan girl never reaches the ground. Her chains break her fall, and her neck, with a sharp snap. Guards haul her body back up and drag it away for disposal. Neither Gardulla nor the crowds around the box seem to notice.

The next day, the girl is replaced for less than the cost of a protocol droid.

Life is cheap.

-

When someone else owns your life, you can kill yourself to put them out a few gold coins, or you can go on living. It makes little difference.

She stops dreaming of death, but she stops dreaming of freedom, too.

Defiance and despair start to look the same.

-

“What’s your name, girl?”

She occasionally still hears the question from some of Gardulla’s guests who like to pretend they care. She’s learned to recognize it in a variety of languages.

“Shmi,” she always answers, and they are always satisfied, for none of them speak the patois of Mos Espa’s street urchins that was her mother tongue.

She has no name that they deserve to hear. No name that she wants dirtied on their lips.

 _Mimshisema_.

Her name is hers alone.

-

Her next act of defiance is as unwitting as her first.

Gardulla has entertained no human guests in nearly a year. None of her guards are human or even near-human, nor are any of the guests she has been lent out to in that time. And though the dancers’ health is never a top priority, they are kept on a strict schedule of injections that are supposed to prevent this from happening. This defies not only expectation, but explanation.

It is absolutely impossible for her to be pregnant.

-

The mistress of the harem takes the news in stride.

She assumes a secret liaison, for which the guards are all docked pay and the defiant slave girl is punished with solitary confinement. But there’s no use in doing anything worse to her.

Her services can easily be replaced for a few months, and in the end, the child will be Gardulla’s property as well.

Slaves are cheap, but not worthless. There’s no sense throwing them away.

-

In her cell, she waits.

Every day the impossible child within her grows, asserting its own existence in spite of all reason. Her breasts and stomach swell, her hips widen, her hair grows thicker. Tiny hands and feet beat against the inside of her abdomen.

“Here I come,” the child seems to be saying, “Ready or not.”

She does not even know what to be ready for. A genetic aberration? A cross-species chimera previously thought impossible? A malignant spirit having taken on flesh?

Who could say what her child would be.

-

She gives birth in her cell, with only the mistress of the harem to help her. The child is a girl, fully human, with a healthy set of lungs.

“Here I am, here I am,” the baby’s cries announce. “I should not be here, I was not wanted here, but in defiance of you all, here I am.”

The child is hers.

-

 _Anika Mimshisema_.

Here I am, and I will walk on the air itself, up past the twin suns and away from this dustball on my own bare feet, if only I get enough of a running start.

Shmi Skywalker knows she will never leave Tatooine, but her daughter will one day sail among the stars. Her impossible daughter, the child of her flesh, will be free.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing a Rule 63 Anakin/Padmé story, and then things got wildly out of hand.


End file.
